The articles and essays in this blog range from the short to the long. Many of the posts are also introductory (i.e., educational) in nature; though, even when introductory, they still include additional commentary. Older material (dating back mainly to 2005) is being added to this blog over time.

Tuesday, 22 March 2016

A Challenge to Materialism in the Philosophy of Mind

Certain
positions in contemporary physics provide anti-materialists (in the
philosophy of mind) with grist for the mill. For example, are there
non-physical objects that are quite acceptable to contemporary
physicists? Jeffrey Poland thinks that there are. He writes:

“It
should be understood that the primacy of physics in ontological
matters does not mean that everything is an element of a strictly
physical ontology… physicalism… allows for non-physical objects,
properties, and relations… physicalism should not be equated with
the identity theory in any of its forms… I prefer the idea of a
hierarchically structured system of objects grounded in a physical
basis by a relation of realization…”
[813]

All
the above is quite acceptable, even on a physicalist picture of the
world. However, does any of the above help in the mind-body problem
or does it somehow justify attacks on materialism?

For
a start, the non-physicality of (abstract) objects, properties and
relations aren't of the same logical order as the ostensible
non-physicality of mind or consciousness. The above can be seen as
abstract objects, properties or abstract relations. We surely can't
say that mind and consciousness are abstract in nature. Sure,
they're non-spatial, and perhaps non-temporal; though does this make
them equivalent to abstract objects like propositions, universals,
etc.? Even Quine (an arch-naturalist and physicalist) accepted the
existence of numbers. And if anything is an abstract object, a number
is!

Thus
I think that Poland has actually set up a disanalogy between the
abstract objects, properties and relations accepted in physicalist
philosophy and the putatively abstract nature of mind or
consciousness.

The
passage above finishes off with a statement of Poland's belief that
he prefers the “idea of a hierarchically structured system of
objects grounded in a physical basis by a relation of realization”.
This too is acceptable to most philosophers of the physicalist kind.
Perhaps, more importantly, it's acceptable to scientists because
there is a way in which (like mentality) we can see meteorology,
biology, anthropology, palaeontology, geology, anatomy, etc. as
‘higher-level’ sciences – or at least sciences which study
higher-level phenomena. How does this concern the scientific question
of consciousness or mentality? John Heil writes:

If
you threw out “higher-level” mental states or properties solely
on the grounds that they depend in a mysterious way on lower-level
material phenomena, you would have to toss out all the special
sciences as well.
[813]

Yes,
the sciences mentioned above do grow out of physics, as, for example,
chemistry does and biology grows out of chemistry to a large extent:
though does consciousness or mentality really grow out of the
physical in the same - or even in a similar - way to all these
acceptable scientific examples? Are these higher-level states and
properties of the special sciences ‘emergent’ states and
properties in the way that the states and properties of mentality can
be seen as emergent or, at least, ‘supervenient’? Surely the
parallel is far from exact.